This post submitted by SOAN Prof Janel Benson

The SOAN Department is pleased to announce that 10 SOAN students will be conducting independent and faculty-supported research this summer.

Hannah Post, Emily Kahn, Audrey Swift, and Cameron Pauly will be conducting research with Dr. Kristin De Lucia and her colleague Enrique Rodríguez-Alegría (University of Texas-Austin) on their NSF supported archaeological project in Xaltocan, Mexico. Just outside of Mexico City, Xaltocan was a major regional center prior to the rise of the Aztec Empire and was conquered by Cortes upon his arrival into the Basin of Mexico. This summer they will be excavating colonial and Aztec contexts, including the courtyard of Xaltocan’s 16th-century church and an Aztec house. Students will gain training and experience in archaeological excavation, survey, and laboratory analysis of artifacts.

Farrin Saba ’19 and Hailey Biscow ’17 will be working with Dr. Santiago Juarez on the Noh K’uh Archaeological project in Chiapas, Mexico. Near the Southern border of Mexico, Noh K’uh is an ancient Maya city that is located within one of the last remaining rainforests known as the Selva Lacandona. This summer they will be charting new archaeological the remains of a city that dates as far back as 800 B.C., during a period when the Maya were first constructing cities. Students will gain training and experience in archaeological survey, and laboratory analysis of artifacts.

Vanessa Escobar and Jolene Patrina will be working with Dr. Elana Shever on her project examining how people in the United States today are using dinosaurs to think about what it means to be human. The students will be helping Professor Shever process and analyze the interview and participant-observation data she has been collecting over the last few years.

Hunter Filer ’17 and Tim Englehart ’17 have received funding to conduct independent research this summer. Hunter Filer ’17 received funding from the Lampert Summer Fellowship to travel to Denmark to investigate the integration of immigrant children within the Danish educational system. Tim Englehart ’17 received funding from the Division of Social Sciences to examine the role of selective colleges in producing graduates committed to altruistic good. Professor Janel Benson will serve as the faculty sponsor for both projects.

A recent article in the New York Times makes a great case for putting sociologists and the insights of sociology in a more prominent role in the policy making process. Why aren’t sociologists and anthropologists asked more frequently for advice about policy matters? It’s a good question. While the SOAN blog often highlights the impact that our faculty and students are having on, say, the global response to Ebola or climate change policy and environmental justice, we don’t often see a “chief anthropologist/sociologist” in the highest levels of government, think tanks, or NGOs. My theory: the explanations that we provide for many questions of societal import challenge existing conventions and structures, meaning that, while our explanations and data might be valid, they are hard to incorporate without larger conversations about power and inequality. What do you think, SOAN community? Comment here or email me to share your ideas.

Yet the national horizon is not the only one upon which environmental activists, scholars and policy makers have been seeking change for the past several decades. In fact, even before these newest, draconian and ill-conceived federal maneuvers on climate change, a stalemate on real substantive policy change was a feature of politics in the US. In a new chapter on environmental justice, “The pitfalls and promises of climate action plans: transformative adaptation as resilience strategy in US cities,” authors Chandra Russo, in SOAN, and Andy Pattison, in Colgate’s Environmental Studies Program, argue that we should have a distinct interest in city level policy. In the absence of leadership from the United States federal government, cities and states have long been the foremost means for addressing climate change. Some of the most cutting edge ideas and actions being taken by US cities are still in their relative infancy. For this reason, Russo and Pattison argue that there is great potential for such strategies to incorporate social equity objectives in consequential ways, especially if grassroots efforts are present and vocal. This chapter is not about putting on rose colored (sun)glasses, as Russo and Pattison point out real shortcomings and challenges that these cities, and others wishing to follow suit, are going to have to address. The piece does, however, point to some exciting developments and indicates that local and state politics are important for transformative change even in times of massive national setbacks.

Thirty years ago, there were almost no NGOs in China. Today, there are over 675,000 legally registered, and millions more that are unregistered. This is happened even though the Chinese political and legal environment has been unfriendly, even hostile. My research looks at how this happened, and how it is transforming the relationship between citizens and the state in the PRC.

When the Western media covers Chinese NGOs, they tend to only focus on the ways that the Communist government oppresses, attacks or punishes them. Although these incidents are important, this focus ignores the ways that NGOs are mostly flourishing in China. Read the essay here.

Students in Media & Politics (FMST/SOC 375) recently completed a two-phase project that combines the dual focus of this course: art and of science. Over the course of the semester, they generated original social scientific research and then created short video reports about their findings. Their videos are an example of public sociology, meaning that they make sociological scholarship accessible to a non-academic audience. You’ll find a link to the videos, which cover topics such as Freddie Gray’s death, the Confederate Flag controversy, the Supreme Court same-sex marriage ruling, and the San Bernardino attacks, at the end of this post.

Prof. Carolyn Hsu recently spoke on activism and NGO’s in the People’s Republic of China at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC on December 6, 2016. The talk was open to the public. Here is a link to the article by Brookings following the event.

This post was submitted by Tim Englehart ’18, Sociology major.

This semester I worked with two other students, Sally Langan ’17 and Valeria Felix ’18, to study the conversation surrounding the use of trigger warnings on college campuses as a project for Professor Henke’s “Media Frame and Content Analysis” course (SOC 251). A trigger warning can be defined as a statement that comes before a piece of writing, a movie, or a speaker or discussion that alerts the audience that the material presented may be stressful or evoke a traumatic response from past experience. Proponents of trigger warnings argue that they protect students from emotionally harmful content and in doing so create spaces in which students can feel safe to engage in critical discussions and learning. Critics of trigger warnings argue that such warnings contradict the ideal of free speech, and that exposure to uncomfortable situations is an experience that facilitates learning and growth—allowing students to avoid discomfort in the classroom detracts from their educational experience.

Post and photos submitted by Professor Jordan Kerber

Students in Professor Jordan Kerber’s course, “Field Methods and Interpretation in Archaeology” (ANTH 253) use a local archaeological dig site as their classroom, excavating artifacts from the Brunk site in Lincoln, NY. The site contains the remains of an Oneida village, dating to the late 1500s or early 1600s and then again during the 1750s. Over the past several fall semesters, ANTH 253 students have found several hundred Native American and European artifacts, including stone chipping debris and tools, pottery, animal remains, glass trade beads, smoking pipe fragments, and metal scraps. Students in the class focus on excavating, processing, analyzing, and interpreting archaeological objects recovered from this site, as seen in the pictures here.

Students in Prof Jordan Kerber’s ANTH 253 course work at the Brunk archaeological site, in Lincoln, NY.

Our new SOAN colleague, Prof. Chandra Russo, has the cover article in the newest issue of Race and Class. Prof Russo’s article, “Witness Against Torture, Guantánamo and solidarity as resistance,” focuses on the group Witness Against Torture, a community that has been calling for the closure of the Guantánamo Prison since 2005. Witness Against Torture is one of three social movement organizations that Prof Russo has studied as part of a larger project examining activism in resistance to US security policies. Prof Russo notes that while her article focuses on how Witness Against Torture is working to close Guantánamo, she also analyzes how they joined with the Black Lives Matter movement during January of 2015 to link militarism and imprisonment abroad to policing and incarceration within the US interior. Congratulations to Prof. Russo on this important new publication!